Game wardens set record — but not for antler spread

Game wardens, their faces obscured to protect their identities, display 2 tons of marijuana worth an estimated $4 million that was seized.

Game wardens in Starr County recently caught three men over their bag limit — baggies of pot, that is.

The 2 tons of marijuana they found, with an estimated street value of nearly $4 million, undoubtedly would fill plenty of baggies. Instead, the state game wardens, working with U.S. Border Patrol agents, seized the pot while it still was in larger packages — 409 of them — waiting to be shipped north.

The game warden contacted the Border Patrol, and officers from both agencies went to the residence near Salineno, a small community on the Rio Grande.

The officers caught three people fleeing from the house, according to the release. Inside the building and in a nearby underground bunker, they found 4,719 pounds.

“This is one of, if not, the largest drug seizure by Texas game wardens in the history of our agency,” TPWD Law Enforcement Director Craig Hunter said. “Obviously, we are very proud of the wardens involved in this case. Beyond that, we are tremendously pleased to have played a part in preventing such a large cache of marijuana from reaching our streets,”

Game wardens are peace officers with the same authority as a state trooper and are allowed to enter private property to enforce hunting laws, spokesman Mike Cox said.

“We always have our eyes open for more than just poachers,” he said. “Poachers and game law violators are their primary focus, but they're still police officers. One of our slogans is, 'Law enforcement off the road.' Our game wardens, the men and women, are fully commissioned and they are often in places the highway patrol troopers are not because of the very nature of their job.”

Cox pointed out that game wardens were among the law enforcement officers who Thursday arrested two jail escapees, including a member of the Aryan Brotherhood and capital murder suspect, in Northeast Texas.

Border Patrol agents seized nearly 2.3 million pounds of pot during fiscal year 2012 on the Southwest border, according to the agency.

Last spring, agents near Del Rio set a regional record, seizing 12,000 pounds of pot one day and 6,000 the next.